What are the Reasons Behind the Migration of GroupWise to Outlook?

Novell GroupWise and Microsoft Outlook are both leading email clients fulfilling the same purpose but supporting different features. When the audience of both clients is poles apart, what prompts GroupWise users to migrate their mailbox data to Outlook? Regardless of their reasons, most users prefer Stellar Converter for GroupWise to perform the conversion in an accurate and risk-free manner.

GroupWise and Outlook, both immensely popular, both built to support the varying communication requirements of professional and home users across the globe. While both clients offer the basic features of email, contacts management, calendaring, task management, etc. each supports some key aspect which makes it different from the other. Outlook, for instance, is more user-friendly, secure, and fast as compared to GroupWise. On the other hand, GroupWise gives its users access to dynamic flexibility, administrative features, social threading, and more.

When each platform has its own high points and dedicated user base, why do GroupWise users migrate to Outlook? What is it that prompts them to undertake the challenging procedure of exporting their mailbox data from one client to another? Through this post, we’re attempting to answer this question and also highlight the simplest and most reliable GroupWise to PST migration tool which makes the complex task seem like child’s play.

Reasons to migrate GroupWise to PST

The smartest way to understand the reasons to migrate GroupWise to PST is unlocking the major shortcomings of the GroupWise client and highlight how Outlook overcomes these shortcomings.

Drawbacks of the GroupWise email client

• Often, technical issues can arise unexpectedly within GroupWise giving resulting in troubles when opening or sending emails
• The platform doesn’t support shared folders
• Improper handling of the application can mess up its internal settings causing it to crash over and over again
• Errors and crash messages are usually very cryptic and not at all helpful in finding the resolution; for example – “The address book de-initialization function was never called by its parent application”.
• The interface of GroupWise is quite basic as compared to other email clients which have much better and interactive look and feel

The above issues might appear to be minute to users who’ve gotten used to working with GroupWise for years. However, one of the most dreadful aspects of the platform is that debugging errors or corruption problems within it is extremely difficult. Almost always, in cases of corruption, organizations have to face significant data loss. This can be the huge blow for companies that rely heavily on email communication and data integrity. Overcoming these shortcomings of GroupWise is the primary reason for companies to want to switch to Outlook.

How Outlook overcomes the drawbacks of GroupWise

• The platform has a more modernized and polished look and feel
• Maintaining Outlook is more reasonable as compared to GroupWise
• It is faster and more stable than GroupWise
• It has more features as compared to GroupWise
• It is extremely user-friendly and needs no practical prior training

The most feasible way for corporate houses to avail the benefits of Outlook is to perform a GroupWise to Outlook migration. This can be achieved by extracting all mailbox data from GroupWise and converting it to Outlook compatible PST file (the local data file in which all Outlook mailbox data is saved).

Technique to convert GroupWise data to Outlook

The most risk-free and efficient method to perform the conversion is to use reliable GroupWise to PST migration tool Stellar Converter for GroupWise. This professional software enables you to export emails, attachments, contacts, documents, calendars, and other folders in GroupWise mailboxes to Outlook PST files. Before the conversion is performed, users are given the opportunity to preview mailbox data in the software’s interface and pick exactly what they wish to convert. The tool supports the conversion of a single mailbox or multiple mailboxes simultaneously and it is compatible with various GroupWise versions.

Here are the steps to perform the conversion using this tool:

1. Download, install and launch the software
2. On the home screen, a dialog-box will pop-up ask you if you want to ‘Convert single GroupWise mailbox to PST file’ or ‘Convert all GroupWise mailboxes to PST files’. Select appropriate option as per your requirement and then provide the following information:
   1. In case of single mailbox, provide the GroupWise mailbox name and the required user password for login
   2. In case of multiple mailboxes, specify the GroupWise administrator name and the respective password for login
3. Click ‘OK’ to initiate the mailbox scanning process
4. The next screen shows you the progress of the scan. As items are discovered for conversion, they’re populated within a tree-view list in the software’s left-hand panel
5. When scan finishes, select any desired items to see their preview in the main interface panel
6. To convert, select the desired mailboxes, folders, or items within these folders and click the ‘Save’ icon from the toolbar
7. Choose the desired output format (in this case, PST) and then click on ‘OK’
8. When prompted, choose if you want to save the converted items to a new PST or append them to an existing PST
9. Once the process finishes, a message box appears displaying ‘Selected Mailboxes Converted and Saved Successfully’

Wrapping it up

Email migrations are typically risky and lengthy. Placing your trust in a reliable and efficient tool is always the best way to ensure the job is done smoothly. Among the huge number of converters available online, Stellar Converter for GroupWise is the most viable choice.